Hi there!  I’m rivercitylizzy from The Nature of Beauty, here at Luna’s gracious invitation to present a guest post for your amusement.  Mahalo, Luna!

First I have a secret for you all.  Don’t be afraid, you can come closer, it’s not THAT kine secret Don’t tell Luna though, I don’t wanna get thwacked…you ready?  Here it is:  eternal procrastinator that I am, I had not one word of this post planned in advance.  In fact, until I got home from work Wednesday night (a whopping 11 hours after I began) I did not even know what topic I would be writing about.  Eek.  Then I opened up the mailbox and `auwe!  What did I find but my inspiration nestled snugly between junk mail and catalogs–the fragrances from Solstice Scents I had ordered just three days prior!

The universe, she takes good care of me.

Solstice Scents is a perennial favorite of mine since my introduction to the brand nearly a year ago.  There are several reasons for this: their branding is consistent, appealing to me (that is, the theme is one I identify with), and professional without loosing all traces of personalization (for example, the name of the scent on each bottle/sample vial is handwritten–legibly!); their scents are hauntingly beautiful, complex (with many wonderful layers of scent to discover throughout wear time), long-lasting, and unique; their packaging for full-size fragrances is both lovely and consistently easy to use (read: reliably dispenses product); and their price point is very reasonable ($2.50 for samples–including LE!–and $9-$15 regular price full sizes…which are 10 ml).  I particularly appreciate that the price of full size perfumes at Solstice Scents appears to be based on the number and quality of the ingredients used, rather than whether a scent is “general catalog” or “special/limited edition.”

With that background in mind I will say that when Angela, the owner/perfumer, announced the coming Valentine’s Collection on the Solstice Scents blog I felt some trepidation, as she confessed “We went cherry crazy this year (which is only slightly less insane than plum crazy haha).”  Cherry notes, they are not always my friends.  So I approached this collection with a heavy dose of skepticism.  This year’s offerings to St. Valentine included 4 new scents–Black Forest, Cherry Cordial, German Chocolate Cake, and Nightgown–plus two of their GC scents that fit the V-Day mood, Cherry Vanilla Amberosia (not a typo) and Violet Truffle, offered in their popular bath/body products (Ganache, a whipped body cream, and Burnishing Glace, a sprayable “dry” body/hair oil).

I was glad to see that despite the “cherry crazy” theme, half of the new offerings did not include cherry notes at all, and one of the cherry scents seemed like it had enough friends of my skin in the notes to work.  I forged ahead and purchased full sizes of Nightgown and Black Forest and requested a sample of German Chocolate Cake as my freebie at checkout.  I placed the order on Sunday, February 26 and as stated above my package arrived on Wednesday, February 29.  That’s going from FL to CA via USPS in THREE BUSINESS DAYS.  Awesome CS, Solstice Scents has it!

Okay on to the scents:

Black Forest– In the bottle, I can pick up the dark sweet cherry notes but they are not heavy on the bitter almond (which these accords can have) and are balanced by rich and spicy woods and a peek of bright pink pepper.  On the skin, though…oh, on the skin, Black Forest epitomizes what I love most about Solstice Scents: hour after hour of delight exploring the many layers of this scent.  For me, the woods and pepper take center stage almost immediately, with just a hint of the cherries, and I’m reminded of a type of crack seed that I favor called “cake olive” (hush, you, it’s an acquired taste!).  This is followed by the tobacco and hay, roughly 1/2-1 hour later and balanced with the prior notes.  The official description mentions “a humidor housing a very fine and exceedingly dark chocolate cherry pipe tobacco” and I have to say at this stage I agree–it is gorgeous and the tobacco note in Black Forest does not turn into something nasty and unmentionable on my skin.  At last, after several hours, it settles at last into its final stage of delicious, creamy vanilla-sweet-woodsy incense.  Dead sexy.

German Chocolate Cake (sample)– On cold sniff from the vial the sweet fluffy cocoa and a mouth-watering toasty coconut are evident, with no pecans in sight (scent? hm). As it warms up on the skin, this scent blossoms, and a lovely rich chocolate-vanilla comes forward balanced nicely with sweet shredded coconut and toasted praline pecans.  Gah, this is more gorgeous than I expected, not being biased toward foodie scents.  This scent is a very limited release (one of the components was unexpectedly discontinued by the supplier), and I’m hoping I can still lay hands on a full size.  Otherwise, I shall be hoarding this little vial.

Nightgown– From the bottle I get mostly sweet creamy white florals, not much of the vanilla/white chocolate which would lend a more foodie edge to the blend.  It is not the headache-inducing, hit-you-over-the-head kine “white floral” fragrance, however, even straight out of the bottle.  On the skin this opens up into a lush and seductive blend of tropical blooms (the actual thing, which is pretty amazing to me, having smelled both tuberose and tiare in real life), vanilla (a floral sort of vanilla, rather than a buttery/sugary one), and creamy/nutty white chocolate.  This for me is a nostalgic scent, taking me back nearly 10 years to my first lessons as a hula student and invoking the heady mix of creamy sweet haupia, cocoa butter melted into sun-kissed skin, and fresh tuberose leis and tiare hairpieces warmed by the exertions of a heartfelt performance.

Sweet dreams 

In no particular order(and by no particular order I apparently meant alphabetical order…) I’m going to list my top ten favorite indie companies and then I’m gonna tag a few people to do the same.

1. Cocoa Pink – oh man. I fell in love with her scent fear of cemeteries. It’s amazing. She was going to drop her hallow’s eve scents and I bugged her on a few occasions to keep it. Luckily someone suggested changing the name to Dirty Carnation which she liked so yay it stays. I’m in love with her voluptuous body butter and her bubbling scrub is pretty awesome too. Her shampoo is awesome and it makes a great kitty wash.
2. Darling girl Cosmetics – Susan has a million and one shades of shadow to choose from. She has some beautiful shadow colors, but I especially like her colored lip balms and her lip scrub in a tube. If you haven’t purchased anything with the rose/passionfruit scent you’re missing out. She also has cream blushes which are awesome, especially Pink no Corisu.
3. Detrivore Cosmetics – Oh man Distorria has some gorgeous shadows. She also lives within driving distance of me so I get to pick up my packages in person. Woot! I love the theme to her shadows, I love their creepy names and they’re just beautiful. A little birdie also told me that she’ll be selling perfume oils soon too. If you don’t own Omen you need to remedy that. GORGEOUS purple!
4. Evil Shades Cosmetics – oh man. She has beautiful lippies and shadows and everything. She made a shadow after me called Toxic Lotus, it’s gorgeous, you should get it along with Eplefe and um all of her other shadows. If you like pink lipstick you have to get Fearless, it’s freaking amazing, and Deception? Perfect freaking nude. I want all of her lippies and shadows and blushes, and okay pretty much everything she sells. Her spectrum pots and primer have been the longest lasting eye primers as well. Check them out. Also drooling over her holiday shades!
5. innocent+twisted alchemy – Gosh these colors are beautiful. They remind me of the old Aromaleigh formulas. They’re just shiny and complex and pretty. She offers sample pods/clamshells and she fills them to the brim, she’s also a sweetheart and does all the art for her company. She’s very talented. Twisted is one of the most amazing colors ever, and I love Innocent as well, I love all of her shades and can’t wait to get my claws on her holiday set.
6. Linnaeus Cosmetics – Okay so Marin is possibly the sweetest, cutest, quirkiest creeper in the universe. I loves her. Her shadows are rich and beautiful and the formulas are like butter. They’re just wonderful. Plus she was super awesome and made the Axolotl collection for me! *squee* There are no duochromes but her shadows have beautiful sparks of color and look complex. She’s definitely a keeper. Can’t wait for her shop to open back up at the beginning of the year.
7. Morgana Cryptoria – Oh jeez what can I say, I need one of everything please. She has gorgeous, amazing lippies. I have a few of her balms that are rich and amazing, I’m sad to see them go, but the new glosses and gels look pretty awesome, and she did turn some of the balm colors into glosses. Hooray for diabolical druscilla! I have Azalea and Azalea blue in cute little flower pots that Amanda from Karmic Dreaming sold me during a blog sale. Love them. I currently have an order from her and am trying to patiently wait until Wednesday so I can pay for it. Can’t wait to have more of her lippies!
8. My Pretty Zombie – Seriously Andrea is a goth Mary Poppins. I kid you not. She’s tied with Marin for cutest, sweetest, quirkiest, most awesomely nice person ever. She’s genuinely nice and aims to please and has the best customer service. Besides her being awesome, she makes amazing shadows, if you want duochromes check her out, because she has some sort of magic touch for duo’s. Kid you not. mNg trio, Husbandry Afflictions collection, monstrous industry, illustrated ink, there are so many pretties it’s hard to choose. PLUS she makes zombie barbies. When I first shopped with her the barbies gave me the creeps, it was mostly the blood painted on, I don’t do well with blood, but now I kinda like them, and kinda want one. She did trade me a zombified barbie hand pendant for a scarf(I’m still making the scarf. ). So check her out cause if you like creepy you’ll like MPZ. Also don’t pass up Unicorn Pee or her MDMA blush of freaking awesome sauce.
9. One Hand Washes the Other – Becca is a crazy, blunt, firey witch troll that stands over her giant cauldron making black magic soap of amaze. Seriously that stuff is magic. She was also awesome enough to make a glycerin free formula for me, which is even more awesome, AND, AND SHE MADE MY MOST PERFECT SMELL. I Smell Like a Witch is omg perfect. The only thing better is mixing I Smell Like a Witch with Cocoa Pink’s Fear of Cemeteries. It’s like magic and the most amazing smell EVER. I’m counting the minutes until we get paid so I can order creamy soap and everything possible in I Smell Like a Witch. Seriously, right now, I smell like a witch yo and I like it. Also Becca has black magic soap in jars, and soon she shall have scrubby black magic soap in a jar which I can’t wait to try!
10. Persephone Minerals – Vic is like the queen of duochrome shadows. She’s got some pretties and holy crap if you haven’t seen her Sailor Senshi collections you must go now and see them, they’re amazing and I need them all. NEED, seriously NEED them. They bring back so many awesome memories of watching Sailor Moon, and YES I do love Sailor Moon, so pffft. Vic has amazing colors and her holiday collections are no disappointment. I’ve been swatching them the past few days and they’re beautiful. All I have left to swatch is the reindeer collection and they’ll all be up for your viewing pleasure.

There are other companies that I love as well like Black Rose Minerals, Venomous Cosmetics, Pollen Cosmetics, and yes even Madd Style Cosmetix(please don’t burn me at the stake). They all have beautiful, amazing, quality shadows and you should check them out. I think next time I’ll do a top 15 or 20 list. Some of these companies have been around for awhile, others are brand new, but gosh they’re worth checking out and trying. There are some new companies sprouting up that I’d like to try so maybe next time I decide to make a list I’ll have some new companies up, and well a long list.

And now I tag Luna, Amanda, Claire, Mandy, Stephanie, Andrea, Sammi, Angela and Taryn.

Let’s see your favorite top ten!

So some of you may not know but Andrea from Evil Shades Cosmetics released her Hallow’s Eve collection. It’s gorgeous. You’ll find 6 beautiful loose shadows and 2 test tubes of gloss. Seriously they look like test tubes. These are some gorgeous colors and I can’t wait to get my hands on them.

I’ve copied the descriptions for the colors for you. You’ll find them below. There is also a screen shot of the collection. You can find the collection page here.

While you’re there you might want to pick up Spectrum Pots in Hfb and Pink Prysm. Also shadows in Toxic Lotus and Danger Sox, and you’ll want to grab some lippies in More Synth, Fearless, Stormy, Deception and Lost Kiss! Ooo also you have to check out her blush! I’m lemming Bronze Skies, Ceylon, Pink Noise, Ravishing, Skon and Twizted. Yes Twizted is a blue blush, bright blue with a pink shift, but omg I want it. I bet it looks amazing. I’ve heard great things about Skon too!

Why yes I am plugging the shit out of Evil Shades. Andrea makes some bad ass makeup and you need to try it. So go on! Look at the gorgeous colors below and go check out the rest of her shop.

Zombie Shadows:
Braaains – Braaains is a rosey metallic pink with green shimmer.
Living Dead Zone – Living Dead Zone is a matte red base with a shimmery orange shift.
Re-Animated – Re-Animated is nearly impossible to describe or truly capture on camera…it is a red/brown base that looks purple in some lighting and black with a hint of red or purple in other light. It has a green shimmer that changes from a grassy green to an aqua depenting on the tone the base color is reflecting. It’s beautiful and complex and very strange at the same time.
Zombie Girl – Zombie Girl is zombie green with a sweet pink shift.
Zombie Moon – Zombie Moon is a shimmering silver with a subtle gold shift and gold and orange sparkle.
Zombiefied – Zombified is a metallic orange with soft pink shimmer that peek out when you least expect.

Zombie Gloss:
Antivirus – Antivirus is a sheer orange tint with blue to gold to green sparkling flecks.
Viral – Viral is a sheer red tint with pink and green shimmering flecks.
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